Performances

As they wait to be transported to Greece, the captive women of Troy mourn the fall of the city. Among them, waiting for her fate to be announced, Hecuba is confronted by a series of devastating events: Polyxena is sacrificed at Achilles’ tomb and Andromache learns that the Greeks have condemned her baby son, Astyanax, to death. At the same time, Kassandra foresees the disasters that will befall the Greeks on their return home.

The “Trojan Women”, the only tragedy to have survived from Euripides’ Trojan War trilogy, was first performed in 415 BC at the Great Dionysia. The play was written shortly after the destruction of Milos by Athens in 416 BC, when the Athenians brutally slaughtered every adult male on the island and sold their women and children into slavery.

In the play, Euripides issues a warning to victors everything: act with impunity and there will be consequences. He reminds us how important it is to retain our humanity and dispel the illusion of omnipotence that passing victories bring. In The Trojan Women, the tragedian highlights the enemy's human side and, by focusing on the magnificence of the women of Troy, sheds light on the strength that allows us to keep on going even when are world is totally destroyed.

 

Director’s Note
 
My relationship with this tragedy by Euripides began when I was still a student at the drama school of the National Theatre of Greece. 
 
“The Trojan Women” was our year’s graduation project and it, along with Vassilis Papavassiliou’s “Ajax”, Antoine Vitez’s “Electra”, and Matthias Langhoff’s “The Bacchae”, marked the start of an intense personal quest into, and love for, this theatrical genre and the different ways it can be performed on stage—a quest which remains ongoing today.
 
Which is to say I’m one of those theatre-goers who will take in every production they can of works by the three great tragedians and pay close attention to the different on-stage readings of these masterworks. 
 
What I enjoy most of all is the diversity—when it exists—in the aesthetic approaches the different productions take to the narrative. And that’s because many of us make the mistake of thinking there’s only one version of Antigone, Oedipus, or Hercules, and that there can therefore be only one aesthetic approach to their narratives. 
 
What really makes an impression on me is that our tragic poets, as well as the audiences who attended stagings of ancient tragedies during its 20th-century heyday, liked to discuss them in terms of the well-known myths, but mainly on the basis of their personal interpretations. 
 
Sophocles’ Electra is not the same as Euripides’ Electra. And would they hold any interest for us if they were?
 
The verbalistic version of narrative came to the fore aesthetically in the mid-20th century, and its last vestiges plague us still. That is because, as the unfortunate inheritors of the directors and stars of Greece’s glorious theatrical past, we have had to protect, preserve and disseminate their only arguably interesting stagings. Unfortunately, even today, we still bother our heads with questions like “how is tragedy performed?”, whether it is appropriate to “tread the thymele” of the Argolic theatre, if it is disrespectful (to whom?) to use microphones in performances of the genre, and whether it is “permitted” to interpret the genre in a manner which diverges from the archetypal near-ritualistic style which has been revealed to us in various ways and interpretations by the indubitably useful and important research of archaeologists, philologists and theatre professionals alike.
 
I have always had the feeling, which sometimes amounts to faith, that you can be respectful of the genre even as you attempt to engage meaningfully through it with your contemporary audience, in the context of a sincere effort which begins with a personal, private performance before ending up before the public. 
 
I dare say that the louder we are, the less we can hear what we’re saying. 
The genre is not at risk from performances that may come across as “modernistic”. Like any other, the genre is only at risk from indifferent, sloppy and ultimately weak performances.
 
So, continuing our on-stage study of the tragic genre, this production of the “Trojan Women” will provide my excellent collaborators and I with yet another opportunity to present audiences with our highly personal reading of a narrative by a truly innovative tragedian which tells its heartbreaking tale with quiet sincerity.
 

 

Composer’s Note
 
I accepted eagerly the NTNG’s proposition to compose music for this masterpiece of Euripides, directed by Christos Sougaris. It is the second time I am composing music for a tragedy—the first one was four years ago for the “Bacchae”, also a work of Euripides.
 
I consider the “Trojan Women” a most supreme and timeless play, because it discusses an issue experienced by too many people up to the present day. In harmony with the interpretation of the play by the actors, which is low in volume but not in emotion, the music acquires a cinematic character, traversing through a minimalistic and neo-romantic form, without ever becoming a weak accompaniment. It is yet another “part” in the play, creating the right atmospheres and progressing in correspondence with the tragedy’s development. There is a central musical pattern transformed in accordance with the scenes, and aiming to accentuate the despair, the pain, the anguish. The music does not necessarily become a song during the chorals; instead, it supports the emotions. Together with the director Christos Sougaris, we decided that rendering the music with only one piano would be better coordinated with the overall rendering of the play.
 
I am particularly happy for the opportunity to interpret this music on stage, on the opening night at the Forest Theatre, and at the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus
 

 

Credits

Translation: Theodoros Stephanopoulos, Direction - Dramaturgical processing: Christos Sougaris, Sets - Costumes: Eleni Manolopoulou, Original music: Stefanos Korkolis, Movement: Ermis Malkotsis, Lighting: Alekos Anastasiou, Assistant to the director: Christoforos Mariadis, Assistant to the set - costume designer: Danai Pana, Production coordinator: Marleen Verschuuren

Cast: Melina Apostolidou (Athena), Christina Bakastathi (Athena), Alexandros Bourdoumis (Menelaus), Maria Diakopanagiotou (Kassandra), Chara Giota (Athena), Ilektra Goniadou (Athena), Antonis Kafetzopoulos (Poseidon), Betty Nikolesi (Athena), Kleio Danai Othonaiou (Athena, Helen of Troy), Roula Pateraki (Hecuba), Dimitris Piatas (Talthybius), Polyxeni Spyropoulou (Athena), Virginia Tamparopoulou (Athena), Mariza Tsari (Andromache), Mara Tsikara (Athena), Theofano Tzalavra (Athena), Loukia Vasileiou (Athena, Helen of Troy), Momo Vlachou (Athena)

* Understudies: Giannis Charisis

Women: Melina Apostolidou, Marianna Avramaki, Christina Bakastathi, Chrysi Bachtsevani, Zoi Efthymiou, Chara Giota, Ilektra Goniadou, Ilektra Kartanou, Evi Koutalianou, Loxandra Loukas, Eleni Mischopoulou, Betty Nikolesi, Kleio Danai Othonaiou, Polyxeni Spyropoulou, Virginia Tamparopoulou, Foteini Timotheou, Mara Tsikara, Theofano Tzalavra, Loukia Vasileiou, Momo Vlachou

Man: Christoforos Mariadis